6 Reasons why Headless CMS is the best for your next Blog Site

Headless CMS is gaining popularity, but you can be confused about whether it suits for your next project or not. I made a list of the advantages of the new approach over traditional server-side CMS. So you will be able to make an informed decision, whether Headless CMS will contribute to your project’s success or not.

What is Headless CMS?

In simple terms, it is separated Admin Panel which only in charge of storing and organizing content. And provides access to the content to front-end (presentational part of the website) via API. In this way, we divide responsibilities of storing content and presenting content between CMS and Front-end framework. Everything will do what it is best in.

For example, it is like an admin panel from Wordpress without a direct connection to the website. You store only your posts there and information about pages. While front-end is separated and consumes data of the CMS only via API.

Traditional CMS keeps everything intertwined so it places a lot of constraints on each part.

Better Performance

First of all what better performance will give you? According to Google’s research, more then 53 percent of the users will live a website if it loads more then 3seconds! Just imagine almost half of your mobile readers will leave your site if it is slow. And another Google research shows that most sites fall into the bucket of more than 3 seconds of loading time. So high speed is a great way to stand out from the competition.

From Think with google research

The research has been eye-opening. For 70% of the mobile landing pages we analyzed, it took more than 5 seconds for the visual content above the fold to display on the screen, and it took more than 7 seconds to fully load all visual content above and below the fold

High performance of websites powered by Headless CMS is achieved by having full control over the implementation of the front-end. And At the same time, Headless CMS not overwhelmed with extra code of presentational logic. So developers implement only what is necessary and cut out extra. Plus the modern front-end frameworks take care of the most optimizations.

While in the traditional CMS front-end, back-end and admin panel are all tied together and have a lot of extra features that you don’t always need.

Flexible and Highly Customizable Front-end

The flexibility of the front-end implementation gives you control over user Expirience of your site. You can implement whatever you want and what just wasn’t possible on server-side CMS. You can shape a UX of your site in a way that powers your goals, whether it is more readers, subscribers or customers.

Websites have this flexibility thanks for splitting responsibilities between headless cms and presentational part — your front-end. Traditional cms have quite a lot of constraints and developers spend most of the time finding workarounds to implement some features.

Easier Support and less Valunarbule

Losing your website or having it unavailable for users can be quite a big problem for you. Losing traffic = losing money. So you should be sure that your site is reliable.

While WordPress is by far the most popular way to build a website. It is a popular target of hackers.

Outdated Software is the most common reason for the hacked website.

For example according to report to Sucuri’s 2017 Hacked Website Report 39.3% of the Wordpress sites are hackers because of the outdated Core software. 69.8% of Joomla sites are hacked for the same reason.

And as we know updating these CMS can be quite a pain in the ass.

Sites powered by Headless CMS avoid being hacked for several reasons.

First, most of the headless CMS is hosted on a separate server and provide access to data via API. So it not as easy to find the admin panel as typing /wp-admin :).

Most Headless CMS also doesn’t provide a way to install 3d party plugins, which also one of the top ways sites get hacked. In most cases, there is no need for any plugin and cms customization.

Headless CMS often provide Clod Services for hosting CMS. And this service takes care of all updates and security.

Faster Development, Lower time to Market

The faster you test your ideas and get them to market the faster you learn and the higher chances of success.

Development of the websites with Headless CMS is typically faster since you don’t spend time on workarounds and fixing bugs to implement a not trivial feature. You develop a front-end in your way and don’t have any constraints from the CMS.

Front-end Frameworks provide all necessary tooling for the fast development of high-quality websites. Website developed with frameworks are easier to support, edit and scale.

Cross-platform content Delivery

Headless CMS provides data via REST API. So it isn’t tied to any certain tech stack. You even can integrate content in an already developed application using the same technologies.

You can access your content in any of your applications: Web, Desktop or Mobile. This can save you money and time.

Sum up

For sure a new approach to building websites and delivering content has a lot of advantages. But it doesn’t mean that it is the best choice in all cases. I hope with this information you can make an educated decision and chose what is the best tech solution for your goal.

I would just say that I prefer building my websites and websites for my clients using headless cms and front-end frameworks for React like Next.js or Gatsby.

Have a nice day and build cool websites!

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Hey, I am Vova Pylypchatin a freelance Software Engineer. I love building cool things. If this sounds like you too, get in touch, I would love to chat.

When I don’t create Digital Products, I spend time documenting my journey of building my freelance business, share my knowledge about creating digital products. 

If you are interested in some of that take a look at my blog.

Do you have any questions? You can contact me here